by Alison Lurie
“All right,” Polly decided, digging into her tote bag.
“I saw you before this afternoon,” she added as she paid. “Over on Frances Street.”
“Yeah.” He half smiled. “I saw you too.”
“I wanted to ask you something,” Polly persisted, a little discomfited.
“Sure. ... They’re all natural fabric, one hundred percent cotton, pure vegetable dyes, okay?... All right, ask me.”
“You were working on a house.”
“I was... What? Six-fifty each, like the sign says, two for twelve.” Three oversize teenagers in shorts had shoved their way through the crowd. “Extra-large, right over here. ... Listen,” he added to Polly. “This is a madhouse. Why don’t you meet me for a drink after sunset? Say in half an hour. ... Sure, we’ve got children’s sizes, wait a sec. They’re in a box underneath here somewhere. ... Okay?”
“Okay,” Polly agreed.
“Billie’s on Front Street. Out back in the garden, it’s quieter. You got that? ... Right. Here you are, don’t grab, please: kiddie sizes two, four, six, eight. If you don’t want that one, don’t throw it at me, just put it back on the table, okay? Jesus... So I’ll see you later.”
Around Polly as she turned to go there was a change in the crowd; a rise and focusing of sound, a movement away from the stalls and the performers toward the sea. Caught in a layer of smoky vapor, the sticky raspberry sun balanced on the shimmering horizon, then began to flatten and dissolve. There was a hush, then an increasing patter of applause; finally even a few cheers. Polly didn’t join in. The ceremony seemed to her not, as Phil had put it, “kind of cute,” but phony and self-indulgent. Even before the applause had slackened she had begun to make her way back through the crowd toward Duval Street.
12
THE GARDEN OF BILLIE’S bar was hedged and overhung by lush, loose-leaved tropical plants, and by strings of colored Christmas-tree bulbs just beginning to spark the lilac twilight. On a low platform under a shredding palm a man in a cowboy shirt was strumming a guitar and wailing a sad country-Western song into a microphone.
Polly chose one of the scabby white-painted metal tables near the shrubbery and far enough from the music to make conversation possible.
“Can I get you something?” a long-haired waitress asked, balancing her tray on her skinny hip.
“No, thanks. I’m waiting for someone.” Polly was thirsty; but if she ordered before he came, Revivals Construction would think her either rude or an alcoholic or both.
Around her the tables were beginning to fill; it was nearly half-past six. Maybe Revivals Construction wasn’t coming; maybe he’d decided he didn’t want to see her again after all. Polly felt cross, restless, and — very irrationally, because why should she give a damn — rejected. She picked at the blistered white paint of the table, and stared at the laughing and drinking tourists around her.
“Hi!” Revivals called, waving from the entrance to the garden.
“Hi,” Polly called back. As she watched him dodge, with considerable speed and grace, between the crowded tables, she admitted to herself that he was what most women would consider a very attractive man; tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with a lot of light hair and a face almost cubist in its assemblage of elegant angles and planes.
“Sorry I’m late.” He yanked out the chair next to hers, smiling unapologetically.
“That’s all right,” Polly said.
“Never again. I’m through with those damn T-shirts.”
“You’re quitting your business?”
“Huh? Oh, no. That’s not my business; I was just minding the stall for a friend. This place okay by you?”
“Oh, sure.” Polly sat back a little. It was clear from Revivals Construction’s easy triangular smile and the way he had dragged his chair closer to hers across the gravel that he thought he’d picked her up — or, worse, that she’d picked him up. She could disabuse him of this idea, but then he might get huffy and uncooperative.
“Like the music?”
“Oh, sure,” Polly repeated, though she hadn’t been paying attention.
“That guy used to be a star up in Nashville.”
“Really?”
“Had three record albums. He’s damn good. But nobody here’s even listening to him, if you notice,” He shook his head. “Stupid bastards.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah. But that’s tourists for you.” Revivals Construction shrugged, then half smiled. “Present company excepted, of course.” He set his elbow on the table and leaned toward Polly. His arm, bare almost to the shoulder under the rolled sleeve of his dark green T-shirt, was also cubist in design, its blocks of muscle and bone outlined in veined ridges. “So how’d you like the sunset?”
“Well.” Polly hesitated, but there was no point in not saying what she thought. Revivals, thank God, wasn’t somebody she had to interview, and had no connection with the New York art world or with Lorin Jones. “It really wasn’t all that great, you know. I was surprised anybody applauded.”
“Yes. But they always do. The tourists assume it’s a show put on for their benefit.”
“That’s what I thought too,” she said, surprised.
“They believe that the sun bows down before them. Literally.” He grinned and touched her wrist. “So what’re you drinking?”
“I guess I’ll have a beer,” Polly said, aware of an instinctive reaction in her arm and thinking that she’d better clarify the situation fast. “What I wanted to ask you —” she began.
“Just a sec.” He waved to the waitress. “Two Millers. Okay?”
“Sure.” But maybe what she ought to do was play along until she found out what the hell had happened to Hugh Cameron, who still didn’t answer his phone.
“By the way, the name’s Mac.”
“I’m Polly,” she responded, thinking that in her childhood first names had been a sign of intimacy. Now, when waiters and flight attendants introduced themselves as Jack and Jill, their meaning was reversed.
“Nice to meet you.” Mac held out his hand. The strength and duration of his grip clearly suggested that he had, as Jeanne would put it, designs on her person. “So, how long are you in Key West for?”
“I’m not certain. Three or four days, maybe.”
“Aw, too bad. I was hoping you were down for the whole season.” He grinned meaningly.
“No.” Polly smiled back almost against her will, feeling a once-familiar rush of consciousness. Five years ago she would have enjoyed sitting in a tropical garden, flirting with a good-looking guy; she knew better now.
“Having a good time so far?”
“So-so.” Polly told the truth automatically, then realized that it sounded like a line; and that was how Mac responded to it:
“Maybe you haven’t been to the right places. You like to dance?”
“Yes ... no.” She felt as if her feet were sinking into quicksand. “It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Well —” Polly was rescued by the arrival of their beers.
“Thanks, Susie. ... So, here’s to your stay in the last resort.”
“The last resort?”
“That’s what we call it.” He lifted his sloppily foaming glass and knocked it against hers. Polly heard herself laugh awkwardly. “So what’ve you seen up to now?”
“Nothing much. The ocean, a lot of art galleries. I mean, one resort town is much like the next, isn’t it?”
“Not always.” Mac grinned. “There’s some special attractions here in Key West. Have you seen the pelicans yet?”
“Pelicans?”
“Yep. Big seabirds, they sit on the piers down by the docks, waiting to steal fish off the boats.”
“How big?”
Mac paused and tilted his head. “Oh, four, five feet tall, some of them.”
“Five feet tall?”
“You go down to Garrison Bight at the right time, you’ll see them.” He must be kidding,
Polly thought, but she wasn’t sure. Key West was weird enough to have birds like that. “Okay, what did you want to ask me?” The question was put almost mockingly; Mac clearly thought it had been just an excuse to meet him.
“I wanted to know —” Polly took a breath. “That house you were working on this afternoon —”
“Mm?” He sat back, smiling lazily. The colored bulbs in the bush beside him cast a hot red-and-blue half light on the flat weathered planes of his cheek and jaw.
“On Frances Street, near the cemetery.” Polly plowed ahead. “You were there with a pickup truck. REVIVALS CONSTRUCTION.”
“Right: I was cleaning out the gutters. They always get jammed up with leaves this time of year.” He frowned, as if suspecting Polly for the first time of an ulterior, nonsexual motive, then smiled slowly. “You want something revived, maybe, or constructed?” His tone hovered equivocally between contractor and seducer.
“No, what I want —” Polly remembered to smile back. “See, I was trying to find the man who lives there, Hugh Cameron —“
“Yeah?” Now Mac looked wary, displeased: the progress of his pickup had been interrupted.
“I came down here to Key West to interview him, actually.” Polly leaned toward Mac, smiling, but his manner and tone remained cool.
“Oh, yeah? What did you want to interview him for?”
“Well, it’s for this book I’m writing. It’s a biography of a painter he used to know. I’ve been phoning him ever since I got here Tuesday night, but nobody answers. I was wondering if he was out of town.”
“Yes, he might be.” Mac leaned back even farther now, and looked away.
“You haven’t seen him lately?” she persisted, knowing as the words sounded out that this was a strategic mistake.
“What? No.” Mac took a swig of beer, staring into the foam-crusted glass. “The house is rented out from this weekend, anyhow.”
“Rented?”
“Oh, yeah. A lot of local people rent their places in the winter. A house like that, three bedrooms, a pool, you can get twenty-five hundred a month for it, easy.” He still wasn’t looking at her.
“Really?” Polly smiled hard, and tried to reestablish a friendly conversational tone. “I had no idea of that. No wonder there’s so many yuppie types around.”
Mac did not reply, only shifted in his chair and stared off sideways. She followed the direction of his gaze to three pretty girls at a table on the other side of the garden. He’s caught on that I’m not interested in him, she thought, so he’s turned off. She felt a researcher’s anxiety — and a stupid, automatic pang of loss. “You think Mr. Cameron’s left town already?”
“Could be.” Mac shrugged.
“Do you have his new address?”
He shook his head slowly.
“But you must know how to get in touch with him,” Polly persisted. “He has to pay you for cleaning his gutters, doesn’t he, for instance?”
“I’ve been paid already.” Mac surveyed the garden again, drained his beer, checked his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Got to have dinner with some friends.”
“Okay,” Polly said in a falling tone of frustration and disappointment. Her bad luck had returned with a vengeance.
“Well.” Mac stood up. “See you around.” He produced a meaningless, empty smile.
“Thanks for the beer.”
“No problem.” Mac started to lope away; then he stopped and turned, looking hard at her. “Say.” He took a step nearer, paused for what seemed to Polly a long while, then added, “How about you meeting me later on tonight? We could go dancing.”
A reprieve, Polly thought. “Sure, why not?” she heard herself answer. It’s not that I care anything for him, she told herself, but I’ve got to get that address.
“I could pick you up about nine. If you’re not too fancy to ride in a truck.” He grinned.
“Of course I’m not.” Polly tried to make this casual rather than either indignant or suggestive.
“Okay then. Just say where.”
Back at the guest house Lee, in a tropical-flowered red muumuu, set two plates of steamed fish on the table and refilled both their balloon wineglasses. She’d insisted on cooking supper, though she’d allowed Polly to contribute a bottle of Soave. “So now tell me all about your day,” she said, smiling.
“Okay.” Polly described her lunch with Ron and Phil, her frustrating visits to Cameron’s house and to the galleries, and the sunset on Mallory Dock. She included Mac’s aphorism on this ceremony (without attribution) but not her conversation with him at Billie’s. It was bad enough to admit that she was seeing him again later that evening.
“You’re going out with this guy you saw coming out of a house with a ladder?” Lee leaned forward; her black looped hair swung and her nearly black eyes sparkled with amusement.
“I’ve got to,” Polly explained. “He’s the only person I’ve met who has any connection with Hugh Cameron.”
“So what’s he like?”
“Oh, I don’t know. About forty-five; not bad-looking,” she said indifferently.
“Not bad-looking, huh?” Lee laughed suggestively.
“If you like that sort of thing,” Polly said flatly.
Lee gave her a weighing look. “Well, have a good time, and stay out of dark alleys,” she said finally, and stood to clear the plates away.
“Don’t worry.” Polly also started to rise, but Lee pushed her down with a warm brown hand.
“No, don’t get up. I’ve got a rule, no guests in my kitchen.”
Alone, Polly sat frowning at the hand-loomed tablecloth, displeased with herself. Because of her impatience, she had nearly messed up at Billie’s. She should have let Mac think she was here on vacation, and later just casually asked him about Hugh Cameron. In fact, she should have followed Jeanne’s advice on sweet-talking men, advice that had made her so uncomfortable when it referred to Jacky Herbert and Garrett Jones. But after all, Jacky was almost a friend, and Garrett was an important critic, someone she’d probably know professionally for years. Mac was just a local handyman; after she left Key West she’d never see him again.
Now, though, she had to spend a whole evening with him in some local dive. Well, it could be worth it. He must know how to reach Hugh Cameron, or at least be able to find out. And he might have other information too. If he’d worked for Cameron before, for instance, he could have been inside the old bastard’s house and seen if he’d still got any of Lorin’s paintings. Until Polly found out all Mac knew, she’d better go on pretending she was interested in him.
You are interested in him, a voice said inside her, not in her head but considerably lower down.
I am not, Polly said.
“Here you are.” Lee returned bearing a rough-hewn wooden bowl heaped with brilliantly colored tropical fruit, and looking even more like a Gauguin painting. “I wish I could take you out myself, show you some of the town,” she said. “There’s a really good piano bar down on Duval Street. Trouble is, I have to stay in tonight, I’ve got guests driving from Miami, and God knows when they’ll turn up.”
She placed the bowl in the center of the table and, standing so close that her broad hip brushed Polly’s shoulder, ran one sinewy brown hand through her curls. “You’ve got really nice hair, you know that?”
That was all she said, but Polly was as sure as if it were spelled out in the complicated hand-weave of the tablecloth that Lee was attracted to her and, having just heard that Polly didn’t care for men, wanted to make something of it.
But since women were more subtle and tactful about these matters, if Polly didn’t respond Lee would make no further approaches, or certainly no overt ones. Lee would never grab her, or blurt, “Hey, let’s go to bed.” No one would be embarrassed, and no one’s feelings would be hurt. But it would be easy now for Polly, just by touching or complimenting Lee in return, to silently reply, Yes, let’s.
“Are those real mangoes?” she asked instead.
“That’s right.” Lee smiled as easily as if nothing had happened or been decided. And maybe it hadn’t, not yet. “Why don’t you try one? I should warn you, though, they’re kind of messy to eat.”
“Wow,” Polly said, gasping with surprise and also with relief as the door of the Sagebrush Lounge swung to behind her and Mac, shutting them into a warehouselike space hung with animal horns and antlers and vibrating with noisy air conditioning and amplified country-rock music. On their left was a crowded dance floor, on their right a long bar against which men in work clothes and cowboy gear were leaning. Mac’s costume matched theirs; he had traded his Revivals Construction jersey for a blue Western-cut shirt with pearl snaps. Polly still wore her rumpled Banana Republic jumpsuit; she wasn’t going to change as if for a date, especially not with Lee around.
“Didn’t expect anything like this in Key West, huh?” Mac shouted against the music. Waving to two men at the bar, he led her to a table.
“You can say that again,” Polly shouted back, taking another deep breath. The Sagebrush Lounge was on an ill-lit back street somewhere out near the airport, next to a swamp and across from a trailer camp. On the way there, though she had kept up a sort of conversation, most of her mind had been occupied by Lee’s remark about dark alleys, and the possibility, increasing as Mac drove farther and farther from the center of town, that he would turn out to be a psychopathic rapist. Her instinct told her he wasn’t; but how many women had been raped or even murdered because they trusted their stupid instincts?
“I figured you’d enjoy it, ’cause you appreciate country music,” Mac said, or rather yelled. “’Course, this is pretty mainstream stuff.”
“Those guys over there, they look like cowboys.”
“Yeah, it’s what they think, too.”
“Of course there’s no ranches in the Keys,” Polly yelled, determined not to seem a fool.
“Well, not down here. They’re further up, around Marathon.”
“Really? You mean actual cattle ranches?”
“Yep. The Sea-Cow brand, it’s famous in these parts.”
“I don’t believe you.” Polly laughed.